Mara Jade
Mara Jade was an Emperor's Hand who carried out the Emperor's bidding, killing Rebels and corrupt Imperials alike with cold professionalism. As Palpatine's assassin, she received top-notch training from experts in a variety of fields as well as training in the Force. After Palpatine's death, she received his last command, which was to kill Luke Skywalker; however, the death of her Master caused her to go rogue. Eventually she joined smuggler chief Talon Karrde, becoming one of his best smugglers and his second-in-command. Biography Early Life Mara Jade was born in 17 BBY during a time of great instability as Emperor Palpatine and his apprentice, Darth Vader, were eliminating the remnants of the Jedi Order. Emperor Palpatine took Jade from her parents and brought her to the planet Coruscant at a very young age, where he began to train her in the Force, although officially she was one of the Imperial Palace's dancers. Years later, Jade remembered little about her early life besides her parents' reluctance to let her go and her own certainty that she was going to leave with the Emperor. She did recall at one point that she had had a falling-star globe as a child and had gotten in trouble after breaking it to see how it worked.9 Her master trained her in the ways of the Force and she was made into an agent of the Empire. Some of the Imperial court assumed her to simply be a dancer or one of Palpatine's concubines. Emperor's Hand Throughout Jade's youth, she was pushed through an intensive training regimen—which involved training alongside the Imperial Royal Guard and learning covert espionage and assassination skills, at which she was adept by the age of fourteen — and became an "Emperor's Hand," one of Palpatine's personal assassins, after a final test in which she successfully broke into Wilhuff Tarkin's private quarters. In order to accomplish her mission, Jade, posing as a guest at a formal event at Tarkin's residence, feigned illness in order to get away from the other guests. She then retrieved a sack of equipment and descended down the side of the building to the room containing Tarkin's private safe. While she was breaking in, a group of guards came in—actually droids—and she engaged them with her blaster and lightsaber. However, upon sensing that one of the guards was living, she knocked him out rather than kill a soldier willing to give his life in a training exercise. Vader and Palpatine were pleased with her skills and she was pronounced the Emperor's Hand. Despite there being several Emperor's Hands, she, like the others, was unaware of the existence of any other Hands. Due to her deep connection with the Force, she could hear Palpatine's voice anywhere in the galaxy via a telepathic link. Jade carried out Palpatine's will on numerous worlds, eliminating corrupt Imperial officials, traitors, and others who he deemed deserving of death or judgement. His esteem for her was such that he actually allowed her to time for relaxation, atypical of Palpatine's usual style. In addition to a personal starship and a protocol droid named K3 to aid her in her duties as Hand, she also received a private quarters on Coruscant, where she kept her lightsaber and a lanvarok for left-handers—although Jade herself was right-handed—among the items in her personal weapon collection. Before the Battle of Yavin, she was tasked with gathering intelligence in order to help hunt down any Jedi she found that had survived Order 66 — one such Jedi was An'ya Kuro. Jade had come across a man trying to escape Imperial custody on Kuat and he yielded information to her obtained from a Sacorrian smuggler. The smuggler told her that Kuro was on fifth planet of the Cophrigin system. Jade lobbied the Emperor unsuccessfully to be allowed to be the one to end Kuro, but instead Vader was sent. During the years following the Battle of Yavin and preceding the Battle of Hoth, Jade spied on Darth Vader and delivered reports on his actions to the Emperor, even going so far as watching, from afar, his assault on the Massassi Temples, some six months after the loss of the Death Star over Yavin, which resulted in the capture of Rebel Commander Jan Dodonna. In later missions where she was assigned to discreetly observe him, Jade soon became envious of Vader and sensed a division in him, specifically because she didn't understand the basis of his obsession concerning a young Jedi named Luke Skywalker. Jade began to hope that Vader would betray the Emperor so that she could kill him and take his place as the Emperor's apprentice. Despite these spy activities, she still performed tasks for Vader himself. Jade was responsible for uncovering information about C-3PO and R2-D2 for Vader, though Vader was either unwilling or unable to collect the information from her himself. Instead, he sent a spacer who had been doing work for the Empire to pick up the information from Jade on Naboo before returning it to him for a reward of 2,100 credits. Later, she participated in the celebration of Empire Day and during the festivities, she tasked an Imperial operative to rescue six Imperial officers from a prison facility inside the hidden Rebel base on the planet Corellia. Around the time of the Battle of Hoth she visited Belsavis. Jade had also investigated Moff Glovstoak, posing as "Countess Claria" and discovered that he had been skimming the top off tax returns to the Imperial Center. Faking intoxication, she retired to a private room during a formal party Glovstoak was throwing, only to leave an inflatable dummy behind and, having exchanged her formal wear for a combat suit, quickly infiltrated his office and found six stolen paintings worth millions of credits in his palace. Jade returned to Imperial Center and reported her findings to Palpatine, but also saved General Deerian, whom she believed to be honest, from the fallout of Glovstoak's destruction. Eliminating Choard Upon Glovstoak's arrest, Jade also took the job of discovering who had delivered the paintings, as well as those who had aided the Moff. First, she went to the auction house where the paintings had been sold, but gleaned little information. Next, she investigated secure storage sites and found a good match in the Birtraub Brothers Storage and Reclamation Centre, within which she sensed criminal connections. Observing the facility from a nearby tapcafe, the owners of the storage facility attempted to drug her, but her Force-senses alerted her to the attempt. She confronted the owner, Pirtonna Birtraub, who attempted to kill her. She easily subdued him and he admitted the involvement of a pirate group identified as the BloodScars, a ruthless gang that wanted to combine several gangs to dominate the Shelsha sector. Jade stowed away on one of the pirate ships that she had been pointed to, choosing a HT-2200 medium freighter that was being sent to attack a transport carrying Imperial military equipment. About the time the craft launched an attack on the Happer's Way, Jade was also discovered and attacked by a group of pirates. Undaunted, she quickly took over the ship, captured Tannis, and signalled the Reprisal via the Happer's Way's communications relay to assist her and the freighter. Boarding the Reprisal, Jade was coldly greeted by Captain Kendal Ozzel, who believed she was onto him for five stormtroopers that had deserted earlier after killing Major Drelfin over Daric LaRone's refusal to kill civilians on Teardrop. Jade requested a pair of crewers for the ship, and Colonel Vak Somoril gave her a pair of ISB men to accompany her. Taking the two ISB men and Tannis with her on the Happer's Way, she went to infiltrate the pirate base at Gepparin, pretending to be an independent ship thief who wanted to join the BloodScars. Jade arrived on Gepparin and was brought to meet the Commodore, who was suspicious of her. That evening, Jade was attacked by the two ISB men, who had been ordered to eliminate her, and their attack attracted the pirates' attention. She attempted to deal with the commodore, who ignored her and had his pirate accomplice Caaldra kill her. His attempt was unsuccessful, but she was interrupted before she could stop him and the commodore. Aboard the Reprisal, Ozzel and Somoril, wanting to be sure she was slain, arrived over Gepparin and launched TIE fighters and an orbital bombardment to kill Mara and the pirates. Jade quickly raced to the command centre and found the commodore's body next to a HoloNet message he was about to send to Shelkonwa. She shot down the TIE fighters, and the Reprisal left in pursuit of the Millennium Falcon and their rogue stormtroopers who had appeared in-system, allowing her to escape in a Z-10 Seeker. Journeying to Shelkonwa, she found Vader and the Executor already there in search of Rebel leader Leia Organa. Jade believed that Governor Barshnis Choard was a traitor, and informed Vader of her findings. The Dark Lord of the Sith brooked no interference in his search, but he did allow Jade to investigate and deal with Choard. Upon landing, Caaldra attacked her with a purloined All Terrain Scout Transport, but she was aided by the group of rogue stormtroopers, dubbed the Hand of Judgment and led by Daric LaRone. Taking them under her command, she defeated the AT-ST, unknowingly with the help of Chewbacca in a freighter, but Caaldra had escaped. With her newly drafted stormtroopers, she advanced on the governor's palace, where once again Caaldra tried to kill her. She put an end to him when he tried to shoot her and she redirected the bolt into him with her lightsaber. In the mean time, the Hand of Judgment had penetrated the governor's security. Linking back up with the Hand of Judgment, Jade arrested Governor Choard and vouched for the rogue stormtroopers, even in front of Vader. Later, she learned their true story. She let them go, but warned them to lie low and lose their Hand of Judgment name, saying she was the only Hand in the Empire. A few months prior to the Battle of Endor, Jade was in Palpatine's chamber when Darth Vader brought the Force-sensitive cyborg Lumiya to Palpatine to serve as another Emperor's Hand. Jade was dismissed from Palpatine's presence before he accepted Lumiya's service, maintaining her illusion that she was the only Hand, but Jade nevertheless sensed immediate hostility from Lumiya. = Foot Note = This NPC is used within a RESOLUTION Plot and is so part of the RSN Universe of Star Wars lore. Category:NPCs